Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“He’s being offered foreign money?”

“He just claims he knows where he can raise enough of it to produce a picture show based on Steady’s memoirs that he’d also direct, write and star in — meaning he’d play Steady. That’s about the only thing he said that made a lot of sense because he sure as hell looks like him.”

“I believe I can safely classify that hundred thousand-dollar offer as imaginary,” Keyes said.

“Think he’s lying, do you?”

“Don’t you?”

Undean shrugged. “I’m just telling you what he said. His main point seemed to be that if you’re serious about buying Steady’s book and all the rights thereto, you’d better start the bidding with important money. He thought three quarters of a million would be just about important enough.”

The amount didn’t seem to faze Keyes, who asked, “But he gave no hint of who else is bidding for it?”

“Are we talking about that imaginary bidder again?”

“All right, Gilbert,” Keyes said, making the words snap. “Perhaps there is a real bidder.”

“He didn’t hint because I don’t think he knows.”

Keyes leaned back in the armchair, looked up and seemed to inspect the off-white plaster ceiling carefully, as if for hairline cracks. “Let’s stipulate for the sake of discussion,” he said to the ceiling, “that the hundred-thousand offer is genuine. Next, let’s ask ourselves who’d profit most from securing all rights to an unvarnished account of the life of Steadfast Haynes, and whether this interested party would be foreign or domestic.”

“I don’t know squat about domestic,” Undean said.

“Foreign then,” said Keyes as he brought his eyes down from the ceiling. “After all, it is your bailiwick.”

“If it’s foreign money,” Undean said, “then it’s a good bet it comes from somewhere that Steady operated. That means the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia or Central America. Of those, I’d put my money on the Middle East, with the oil Arabs heading the roster and Israel close behind.”

“And after them?”

“I’d eliminate Africa, except for Libya, who’s showing signs of wanting to climb down off the top of our shit list.”

“It’s an oil Arab country anyway” Keyes said, then asked, “You’re ruling out Central America?”

“Not much shock value left down there. Anything Steady might’ve done to them would only get yawned at now. Except for maybe the drug cartels. One of them might like to have Steady’s book in reserve if there’s ever any plea bargaining to be done.”

“Southeast Asia?”

“Nobody. But move a little north and you’ve got a number one suspect. Japan.”

“He never worked Japan.”

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s say one of the countries I’ve mentioned wants something we don’t want ’em to have. So Country X buys Steady’s steamy memoirs for seven hundred and fifty thousand, maybe even a million, and locks it away. The time comes when Country X brings Steady’s stuff out of the safe, dusts it off and offers to trade it for our yes, no or even our maybe, which could be worth billions to it.”

“What a peculiar mind you have, Gilbert.”

“Too much imagination. It’s what kept me from going any higher than I did.”

“What we’re talking about, of course, is blackmail.”

“Diplomacy’s other name,” Undean said. “But you started paying blackmail the moment you agreed to bury Steady at Arlington. And with my usual hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that Mile Gelinet was just making a test run.”

“She’d be back for money the next time?”

“And the time after that.”

“But she, poor woman, is dead and now we must negotiate with Steady’s son.” A look of faint hope flickered across Keyes’s face. “Is it possible he might’ve killed her?”

“Tinker Burns was with him. Maybe they both killed her.”

“I really don’t like being patronized, Gilbert.”

“Just softening you up for some more free advice you don’t want.”

“Which is?”

“Walk away from it.”

“Only this afternoon you were urging me to buy.”

“That was this afternoon. If you’d’ve picked up the phone and bought all rights for twenty or thirty thousand, fine. But now you’re probably dealing with folks who can call and raise every time. You really want to go dollar for dollar against the Saudis? Japan? The Medellin cartel?”

“There are alternatives, I suppose.”

“Black-bag it, you mean.”

Keyes frowned. “Really, Gilbert.”

“I don’t want to know. But there are a couple of things you should know about young Haynes.” Undean rose and stared down at the still seated Keyes. “He looks like Steady. He smiles like Steady. He even walks and talks like Steady. But the kid is six times as smart as Steady ever was. And that’s fairly goddamn bright, you gotta admit.”

Hamilton Keyes rose, shaking his head in what seemed to be mild sorrow, much as if he had just been told of the death of a second cousin he had never met. “How unfortunate,” he said, paused and added, “I noticed that when you were reeling off that list of various nationalities who might like to lay hands on Steady’s manuscript, you steered away from one in particular.”

“Which one?”

“The Americans.”

“Like I told you, I never did understand those fuckers,” said Gilbert Undean.

They ate in the kitchen of the large old three-story house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest. Haynes had a sandwich of thinly sliced cold roast pork on home-baked bread and a bowl of interesting navy bean soup that Lydia Mott said was her own improvement on the U.S. Senate’s recipe. Haynes drank beer with the meal — his first food since the lunch with Tinker Burns and Isabelle Gelinet nine and a half hours earlier.

Howard Mott drank a bloody mary as he finished off the last slice of a lemon meringue pie. Lydia Mott ate nothing and lingered only long enough to accept Haynes’s gracious and obviously sincere compliments on the soup and sandwich.

After she left, Mott swallowed the last bite of the pie, pushed his plate away and said, “You found Isabelle?”

“Tinker found her and showed her to me when I got there.”

“Could he have killed her?”

“Maybe, if he knows how to drown somebody in a bathtub without getting all wet. I suppose he could’ve done it naked, then put his clothes back on. Providing she really was drowned.”

“What do the cops think?”

“Nothing they’re willing to share with me.”

After Haynes finished his sandwich, Mott said, “If you’d like dessert, Lydia baked some cookies.”

“No, thanks.”

“Then let’s go upstairs.”

Insisting that Haynes take the deep armchair with the ottoman, Mott sat in an old oak swivel chair that matched his equally old rolltop desk whose pigeonholes and slots were stuffed with letters, handwritten reminders, business cards, newspaper clippings, invitations to past and future events and an impressive number of bills. Haynes suspected that Mott remembered where he could instantly locate each item.

“Who was Isabelle’s closest living relative?” Mott asked.

“Her mother. Madeleine Gelinet. She lives in Nice.”

“Then she’ll probably get Steady’s farm in Berryville — or the proceeds from its sale.”

“When?”

“After probate.”

“She could use the money now.”

“It’s possible, of course, that Isabelle made out a will.”

“Unmarried thirty-three-year-olds seldom make out wills,” Haynes said.

“True.”

“I was just wondering.”

“About what?”

“Whether it would be okay for me to go up to the farm and look around. Inside the house.”